Page 158 of Pride High 2: Orange
“Oh. You don’t. You’re in a fantasy world.”
“Fine. Where’s my sword?”
“You um… Don’t have one.”
He glanced over at Ricky, who was sitting next to him at the desk. “What about a crossbow?”
“It’s not that kind of game. You’re supposed to explore.”
Diego looked down at the desk surface. “Have you got a joystick for this thing?”
“No. You just use the mouse.” Ricky nudged it toward him.
Diego grabbed the weird contraption and moved it around. He could feel that it had a ball beneath it, making him think of the Marble Madness game they used to have at the bowling alley. He rolled the mouse back and forth, but the king on the screen remained where he was.
“Not like that,” Ricky said. “Here. I’ll show you.”
He put his hand over Diego’s and pushed down on one of his fingers to make the button click. But when he tried to move the mouse, Diego braced himself so that no matter how hard Ricky tried, his hand wouldn’t budge. He thought this would make him laugh, but when he looked over, Ricky was wearing an odd expression. Like he was a mystery that needed to be solved. And that worried Diego, because the girls who had tried getting close to him had done the same thing.
“Fine,” Ricky said, removing his hand. “I’ll tell you what to do. Click up here, at the top of the screen. Good. See the icons? Those are your options. You can look around, talk to someone, walk away—”
Diego clicked that one, which turned his pointer into a little man.
“Perfect,” Ricky said. “Now if you click on the bottom of the screen… Yeah, exactly. You’re walking!”
“Hooray,” Diego deadpanned.
The king left the screen and entered a forest.
The dumb talking owl followed him. “Watch out!” it cried. “A poisonous snake!”
“Can I kill it?” Diego asked.
“No. It’s a puzzle. You have to come up with a more creative solution.”
Diego stared at the screen a moment. “Can I feed the talking owl to the snake?”
Ricky laughed. “No, but that’s actually a great idea. If you really want to know, you have to find a tambourine so you can scare the snake away.”
Diego leaned back. “I haven’t been into this sort of thing since the original Nintendo.” His dad had surprised him with it for Christmas after a year’s worth of begging. He used to play until the console overheated. “I figured games would be a lot cooler by now.”
“King’s Quest is a classic!” Ricky insisted. “The entire series is great. PC games are different, that’s all. Adventure games especially. They’re more like interactive stories.”
Diego narrowed his eyes in suspicion. “As in reading a book? Is this educational?”
“No!” Ricky seemed to reconsider. “Well, kind of. We can do something else.”
Diego checked his pager, which had been going off all afternoon. “I have some errands to run. Wanna come with?”
“Sure.” Ricky got up and stood behind his chair. Which seemed odd, especially when he began massaging Diego’s shoulders. “I thought you didn’t have to work today.”
“Handing someone weed doesn’t count as work.”
“Then why are you so tense?”
“Those are called muscles. They’re supposed to feel that way.”
“Do you like this?”
